Education Week reports on the plans of billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan to redesign American education. They have launched something called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative–or CZI Initiative–to carry out their plan for “personalized learning”‘( I.e., “depersonalized learning”) to remake education into whatever they think in their limited experience is best. They have hired James Shelton–formerly of the Gates Foundation, formerly in charge of Arne Duncan’s failed SIG program (the School Improvement Grants part of Race to the Top, which federal evaluations found produced nothing of value).
What’s wrong with CZI? First, neither of its founders understands that public education is a democratic institution, in which parents and communities make decisions about their children’s education. It is not a start-up or a venture fund or an app. Did someone elect them to redesign American education without telling the public? What arrogance! Why don’t they pick a District and ask for permission to demonstrate their vision before they spend hundreds of millions to lobby for it?
Second, if they want to help children, why don’t they open a health clinic in proximity to every school that needs one? Dr. Chan is a pediatrician. Children’s health is something she knows about. Mark knows code. Children don’t need code. They need care.
Third, the article describes this as a “high-stakes venture,” but there are zero stakes for Chan and Zuckerberg. If they drop $5 billion, so what? Who will hold them accountable when they get bored and move on?
Why don’t they do what is needed, instead of foisting their half-baked ideas on the nation’s children?
And last, it is beyond obnoxious that they dare to call their tech-based approach “whole-child personalized learning,” which is an oxymoron. What part of “whole-child learning” happens on a computer?
Where are their plans to feed the hungry, heal the sick, create opportunities for play and imagination to run free?
Sad to say, this is a vainglorious and anti-democratic imposition of C and Z’s ideas on people who have nothing to say about it. The one-tenth of 1% toying with our children and our schools, for their enjoyment.
An excerpt from the Education Week article?:
“Pediatrician Priscilla Chan and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg are gearing up to invest hundreds of millions of dollars a year in a new vision of “whole-child personalized learning,” with the aim of dramatically expanding the scope and scale of efforts to provide every student with a customized education.
“The emerging strategy represents a high-stakes effort to bridge longstanding divides between competing visions for improving the nation’s schools. Through their recently established Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the billionaire couple intends to support the development of software that might help teachers better recognize and respond to each student’s academic needs-while also supporting a holistic approach to nurturing children’s social, emotional, and physical development.
“The man charged with marrying those two philosophies is former Deputy U.S. Secretary of Education James H. Shelton, now the initiative’s president of education.
“We’ve got to dispel this notion that personalized learning is just about technology,” Shelton said in an exclusive interview with Education Week. “In fact, it is about understanding students, giving them agency, and letting them do work that is engaging and exciting.”
“To advance that vision, Shelton has at his disposal a massive fortune and a wide array of levers to pull.
“Chan and Zuckerberg created CZI as a vehicle for directing 99 percent of their Facebook shares-worth an estimated $45 billion-to causes related to education and science, through a combination of charitable giving and investment.
“The initiative is structured as a limited-liability corporation, rather than a traditional foundation. That means CZI will be able to make philanthropic donations, invest in for-profit companies, lobby for favored policies and legislation, and directly support candidates for elected office -all with minimal public-reporting requirements.
“For now, Shelton said, CZI is “one of the best-resourced startups in the world, but still a startup,” with fewer than 20 people on its education team.
“In the near future, though, he expects the initiative to give out “hundreds of millions of dollars per year” for education-related causes. Such a figure would place the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative among the highest-giving education-focused philanthropies in the country.
“Within five years, Shelton said in the June 22 interview, CZI’s work should have helped launch a “meaningful number” of schools and learning environments “where kids are performing dramatically better, and feel more engaged, and teachers feel more engaged in the work that they’re doing.”
“Chan, 32, and Zuckerberg, 33, also have embraced the idea of a long horizon for the initiative’s work, saying their support for personalized learning will extend over decades.
“From the outset, however, the couple’s attempt to engineer big changes in the U.S. education system faces significant obstacles.
“Personalized learning” was an amorphous concept even before this new attempt to integrate it with equally hard-to-define “whole child” strategies. It remains unclear how Chan, Zuckerberg, and Shelton intend to balance the organization’s support for research and development with their desire to quickly bring to scale new products and approaches, many of which have limited or no evidence to support their effectiveness.
“And CZI won’t commit to publicly disclosing all of its financial and political activity or to making the source code for its software open and accessible to the larger education community. That stance has stirred complaints about a lack of transparency.”
Thanks, Diane. Was so heartened that LeBron James choose to help the Akron Public Schools rather than assign himself a role as an education expert. If anything, students need less screen time and more time learning in a group setting.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is another example
of an ignorance that knows no bounds… and we will be the ones–teacher’s.
students, parents–will pay a bill we can ill afford. Chan and Zuckerberg are old
enough to know better.. .this is egomania, not true reform,
Naw, they are in their early 30s. Just kids with $100 billion and time on their hands.
Both are SICK!
I even question the “good intentions”. I think the intention of the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative is Chan’s and Zuckerberg’s bottom line. I mean, they barely even pretend it’s charitable, since they openly admit it can invest in for-profit ventures,
Yes, the LLC that Zuckerberg set up allows him to avoid taxes.
Zuckerberg and his wife need a life! I have NO RESOECT forbthem, Gates, and the people with DATK $$$$$$ who pretend they are philanthropists. They are just plain greedy with egos larger than this planet. They are SINK HOLES.
Does anyone not understand why this is a terrible idea? I mean, come on people!
My nephew’s wife picks up on the subtleties…Chan-Zuckerberg to Push Ambitious New Vision for Personalized Learning
… who can “ensure our nonprofits and for-profit investments are coordinated for maximum impact.”
Those emphases create the real potential for hidden conflicts,
said Sarah Reckhow, an assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University who tracks philanthropic giving in education…
Wont make the source code for the software open and accessible?
That’s prolly cuz it’s stolen
There is history in this case.
Ever wonder why Facebook bought out Occulus for 2B? https://www.polygon.com/2017/2/1/14474198/oculus-lawsuit-verdict VR and AR are at the top of these plans for the restructuring of “educational reform” and Zuckerberg’s “New Vision for Personalized Learning”. Yes, SomeDAM Poet: “open source”. Why can’t we all share?
This is one part of a much larger effort. Bill Gates is collaborating with CZI to throw money into various projects. The first round of funding is over $12 million to programs that will by-pass public consideration and oversight, about $1 million to each program, with no strings attached to the use of the money.
That is not a lot of money, but you can bet it is a pilot for other collaborations. The claims about whole child learning are based only on software algorithms designed to offer analyses of student sentiments, grit, immediate interest in content, fluency at keyboarding or touchpadding and such.
Gates and Zuckerberg/Chan are those working for them arecocksure they can do no harm. They will continue to appropriate the language of well-informed educators (e.g., whole child education, personalized learning) in order to brand and market as if educational any computer/online product or service.
Zuckerberg is promoting Facebook communities as proxies for local religious and social welfare organizations. He has been on a listening tour in the Midwest as if testing the waters for running for president.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/06/21/gates-zuckerberg-teaming-up-on-personalized-learning.html
http://www.startupeducation.org/aboutus.html Yes. Going on for 7 years in the making. And we didn’t even know. Follow the links. Follow the money. And read with a most critical mind. As Lloyd Lofthouse has reminded us over and over again.
Good article. The Zuckerbergs, like Bill and Melinda Gates do not want the same kind of education for the masses their children receive. They reek of elitism and the desire to control the masses using social engineering of their choice. Zuckerberg’s latest give away … everyone get a basic income. Look at some of these elitists in other countries … They are not hurt monetarily by 700% inflation, or 90% taxation, just the common man. What ends up being created is more division, not unity.
Something that needs to be pointed out here. Most of us who post here are somewhere on the left end of the political spectrum, yet we are willing to criticize Gates, Zuckerberg, et al. even though they are (nominally) liberal.
Since you are on the right, it’s pretty easy for you to criticize Gates et al. But are you willing to criticize the Koch brothers, the Walton family and other right-leaning elitists?
Excellent question, dienne.
We await her response with bated breath.
Yes! Emphatically yes!
Way too much money on their hands. America needs infrastructure from our schools to our rail systems. We need to be spending more money on research not less . Time for restoring the progressiveness of the tax code with one exception a flat tax on billionaires . How does 94% sound .
Joel,
That’s a fair rate of taxation.
Joel,
That is the best idea I have heard in a long time!
High tax rate for billionaires is a good start, but just making delinquent companies like Apple and Microsoft pay the taxes they owe on corporate income would bring in about 700 billion dollars immediately (and no I don’t buy the argument that because they made the money abroad it should not be taxed. These are American companies, or at least claim to be. As a result they enjoy all sorts of benefits not enjoyed by foreign companies. Not least of these is protection of their assets, which could summarily be confiscated and nationalized if they were headquarted in some countries)
US companies are currently offshoring about 2.4 trillion, which allows them to avoid paying around 700 billion in taxes. That could pay for a lot of needed school renovations and rebuilding.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/03/04/why-u-s-companies-wont-bring-2-4-trillion-in-foreign-profits-back-home/?utm_term=.e502771412be
Apple alone is offshoring about 200 billion and Microsoft about 100 billion.
If Gates REALly wanted to help schools, he would get his tax dodging company to bring that money back and pay the income taxes on it at the 35% rate (not some bargain basement rate that they are pushing for)
The 35 billion could buy a lot of needed school supplies (and i’m not talking about computer software and hardware)
SDP,
Those taxes could rebuild our crumbling infrastructure but there’s an army of lobbyists in DC to make sure that never happens. The Swamp.
Listen Poet I was trying to keep it short .
But I may not be so short when I get to the next Town Hall with my new freshman Democratic congressman in the NY 3rd CD (“Same as the Old Boss”). A member of the
“Problem Solvers Caucus” ,
Everyone loves the word REFORM , none are reformers . So when I hear they want a bipartisan effort on Tax Reform and Infrastructure .
I know we are about to get screwed royally. .That 2.5 trillion being held overseas high on their list . My modest IRA is not where most of it will go’ .
Which leads me back to ed reform . Yes we know all you damn teachers are derelict in your duties. You have failed miserably to solve the problems of society and the economy. . Zuckerberg , Gates , Tillerson (BRT)all agree the problem is not that they have “Rigged ” the system to insure that income distribution flows to the top at a greater proportion than any time since the age of the Robber Barons . The problem is you damn teachers have created a skills gap . A gap that affects high end, highly educated employment and mid level factory employment . Creating a situation where, their only choice is to outsource those jobs or import the labor to do them.
When that fails to explain the inequality in the economy, their other explanation is the Robots . Six hundred jobs just left Indiana to be done by ROBOTS in Mexico. No one hates admitting more than me,that the Orange hair ass occasionally stumbles on some truth . Even if he has no intention of using it for anything than inflaming the deplorable’s.
But that is not the only problem.
‘ You teachers ‘have failed to teach critical thinking, I being a non educator don’t know what you would have done about it . Especially when the Zuggerberg’s and Gates and Tillersons of the World have had as a goal a compliant labor force. For almost 50 years steering education toward career k-U .Compliance being the opposite of critical thinking. But you guys did it because I was not a teacher.
Dienne likes to point out that some of our most respected media sources peddle fake news . I would prefer to say that they try to report the facts but may be interpreting them wrong. All to willing to participate in group think ,encouraged by their corporate owned employers ,they repeat rather than report, a message those employers want to hear . Therefore we have the task of countering this group think ,hopefully changing the narrative.
But the thing is the memes have so permeated the society that the task is monumental. Those that should know better are not willing to entertain that their beliefs could be wrong . Including on this blog.
Including in my little Indivisible group right here on Long Island.
Last week I learned that Debt Service eats up 25 % of the budget Because Republicans created the problem and the debt is unmanageable , which took me for a loop because I thought progressives were Keynesian’s . I guess that is only the case when Republicans are not in office. By the way the real number is 6% they were just a little off . I may agree that Republican tax cuts and wars have blown a whole in the debt . But I thought I was talking to Pete Peterson for a minute rather than Pete _______.
But I also heard the Robot and the Skills Shortage myth . Which sent me to Google to look up a 1/2 dozen older Krugman’s . Then Dean Baker bailed me out again this morning . Somebody tell Zuckerberg he is the problem not a lack of education or skills.
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/yet-another-piece-on-jobs-lost-because-employers-don-t-know-how-to-raise-wages
Under Eisenhower the tax rates were about 91%, and he was a Republican. With all that money he built the interstate highways and bridges that are now in disrepair. The free market 1% are destroying anything for the common good and rewriting tax codes to serve the super wealthy.
Dwight Eisenhower ROCKS! Read his farewell speech. He warned us about the Military Industrial complex.
Amen!
Dilettante billionaires get to use our young people as guinea pigs for their “vision.” Is this what our society has devolved into? Do working people have no rights as billionaires are given the opportunity to experiment with other people’s children? What about our responsibility to provide educational opportunities that we know work well.? Our elected representatives are turning our public schools into gigantic pay to play schemes. All billionaires have to do is bribe the right people to gain access. This is how we wound up with the Common Core and VAM. This is not how a democracy is supposed to work. The poor and middle class must fight against this recklessness.
Just a handful of people are causing the rest of us a lot of headache and grief.
It would actually be very easy to include them in Trump’s travel ban — once they are out of the country on business, of course.
“Sorry, Mr Zuckerberg, but your name appears on the no entry list. No soup for you!”
Great idea!
As the sign says on the way into the financial district (I hope that storage ad is still up. Have not been on the FDR drive in a year) .
https://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/75531/story_image/French_aristocracy.jpg?1396192364
Curious. Has Zuckerberg done anything to directly help the struggling schools in Hawaii? With his second home in Maui, it seems like a great place to start, rather than beginning an organization that will have little transparency. A great deal of youth have left Facebook, and so Zuckerberg’s influence and ability to control a generation weakens. Not surprised to see a sudden desire to recreate and influence education.
Mark’s recent trip to small town Iowa just happened to include a stop in the small town of the GOP state chairman. No doubt attempting to figure out how a group of middle to lower class wage earners outperformed his wealthy, social media campaign agenda. The future voters are sitting in the classroom right now. Read your world history. We’ve seen this done before.
Yes, Zuckerberg has done lots in Hawaii — of at least bought lots.
https://www.cnet.com/news/zuckerberg-defends-lawsuits-filed-over-hawaii-land/
I think the people there love him.
After a whole lot of pushback from Hawaiians, he dropped the lawsuits.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/mark-zuckerberg-decides-suing-hundreds-of-native-hawaiians-might-be-a-bad-idea
Zuckerberg is just regrouping. Bet he buys of some key people.
If the locals love Zuckerberg, then they are stupid.
This Shelton character must be one expert, A-plus, top-of-the-line hustler, since, having wasted millions of Gates’ money on the utter failures of their programs and policies, he’s now been appointed to waste billions of dollars emanating from the creepy Zuckerberg-Chan for-profit “philanthropy.”
Please, for the love of god, Zuckerberg leave us alone! We don’t tell you how to run your business, don’t tell us how to educate students. My school just finished our 3-year SIG process and we didn’t improve. Duh! Extreme poverty, limited English, institutionalized segregation, and not a neighborhood school. A good chunk of our students have or are experiencing trauma for many reasons. Immigrants, refugees, homeless… We are supposed to be turned over to the state or we become a charter. WTF! No one at this point really knows what to do? What is the fate of my school and our students? Who knows?
You know what I’m tired of??? The educational tourists that comprise “leadership” in many districts, who are falling hook, line, and sinker for this crap, and then repackaging and selling them to the public as “great” ideas. A lot of the public, at least in my area, is falling for this crap–thinking that “personalized learning” is wonderful and the “wave of the future.”
And I hope that your school isn’t turned over to charters. The charters in Utah are so bad that kids will be left high and dry when it inevitably closes. SUCH a terrible idea.
Melinda Gates, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan… all frauds.
AMEN! And EVIL, too!
If they have this much money, why don’t they open a free private school for at-risk kids in which they offer the kind of “personalized learning” they envision?
Why don’t they offer it free to the private schools that teach Facebook, Apple and Microsoft’s highest paid executives’ children?
Instead they plan to use money for lobbying, marketing and public relations so that public school students have to be their guinea pigs?
It is a shame no journalist actually calls them out on it. If this idea is worthwhile, they have the money to open a private school for students to test it out. And it won’t cost taxpayers one dime.
Gates and Zuckerberg are investors in the largest for-profit seller of schools-in-a-box.
Yes!!
They did. It’s called The Primary School.
We need a viral video that shows what depersonalized learning looks like, complete with headsets and glazed over eyes staring at a screen.
These guys from Silicon Valley are as greedy & uncaring about the rest of us as the tobacco & oil industries. Anyone who thinks they will bring innovative education to the masses is delusional.
There is absolutely value in using personalized technology in our public schools but this is not the way to implement it. If you want to develop something to improve our school system AND make money off of it, develop a useful product or service and let the schools districts decide if they want to invest in it. If it’s good, people will use it. What’s good for my daughters’ suburban school is not the same as what’s good for an inner city school, a wealthy suburban school, a rural school, or a private school.
Are your kids more special than other people’s kids? Read Mercedes Schneider’s post about Harvard Prof. Roland Fryer’s “two-tier” education- testing everyday for the lower tier and Shakespeare for the kids in the suburb, like his. It’s offensive. Since education decisions are made at the state level and many state Congresses have been bought, whatever you propose will have to counter that and the amount the rich are spending to take over local school boards.
Where are our professional orgs.?
Weingarten, instead of building alliances with other unions whose members have kids in public schools, decided to offend them (hacked e-mails).
If a Gates Foundation executive appears at a public school or college, it’s the unions’ responsibility to actively make visible Gates’ privatization plot, to both members and the public.
Where are they, is an excellent question.
Where in that comment did I indicate that any one district was more special than the other? Different communities have different needs and should be allowed to choose where to focus their money and attention. Letting the state or federal government dictate what those tools are is a mistake and the path to the kind of corruption we should be worrying about when billionaires try to stick their nose into public education.
The problem is that folks like Zuckerberg and Gates actually don’t believe in letting the schools decide what they want.
That’s why Gates did an end run around democracy and presented the schools with a fait accompli over Common Core.
And in general, Gates certainly does not believe in letting people choose what is best. From day one, Gates plan at Microsoft was to give people only one choice by crushing and/or buying out the competition. Microsoft NEVEr produced the best of anything. They would not know how even if they wanted to.
So TRUE, SomeDam Poet. It’s about their pocketbook…KA-CHING!
Description of men like Gates and Z-berg -“Everything has to be fixed immediately. ..They can’t imagine a world where people have actual emotions… Productivity is a fetish”. ( But, apparently it’s a fetish limited to profiting off of people in a weight class below them. They ignore the financial sector’s 2% drag on GDP.)
Their “plan” may be touted as philanthropic desire to “help” children, but as the plan depends upon a growing use of technology/Internet — could it be that, much like the “philanthropy” offered by Bill and Melinda Gates, they will simply be adding to their own massive wealth? How The Super-rich Stay Super-rich 101.
Your suggestion for them to launch medical care clinics and possibly social services speaks to an urgent need. That’s is exactly where Chan and Zuckerberg could make a positive impact. Zuckerberg’s previous experience in donating to Newark schools that resulted in squandering millions while lining the pockets of alleged consultants should have taught him he does not understand how to help public education.
Tim Scott’s “Impact Investing…” at Dissident Voice explains the grand plan. Helping people, doesn’t fit into the model.
But they and their friends wouldn’t make any money off of it.
Their role model is Bill Gates. He doesn’t care crap for democracy either.
Right, Lloyd! They are scum all dressed up.
What should we do to get our concerns to them? Public education seems to be in a turmoil. I really believe administrators, teachers, para professionals, parents and students must speak out.
Zuckerberg and his wife want everything. They are GREEDY & EVIL.
No wonder Zuckerberg censores Diane.
My news articles were censored by Zuckerberg. Others I know were also censored by Zuckerberg. And that greedy, yuppy yahoo, Zuckerberg sued the locals on Kaua’i over Right of Way and Kuleana (responsibly to take care of and preserve the land and sea) Laws. Guess Zuckerberg wants to own Kaua’i. I hope the locals run him off the island of Kaua’i, like the locals on Moloka’i did to McAfee.
Billionaires make me ill. For them, it’s always about themselves and their $$$$$.
You may want to close your FB account. I did. I only posted news anyway. Too spooky to post personal information in this “DAZE” of data mining.
“We’ve got to dispel this notion that personalized learning is just about technology” said the head of Zuckerberg’s latest initiative
“It’s also about money. As Carl Sagan liked to say: billions and billions!”
I’ll post it again. It’s a strategic plan. Look where tech has gone thus far to control. And for the future, put the kids on a head-set (Rift) and they’ll learn everything they need for a better future by sitting with a computer! https://www.polygon.com/2017/2/1/14474198/oculus-lawsuit-verdict It won’t take long. This personalized learning.
Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine), in a new video & in her no book, “No is not Enough,”
tells what is most important, “FOLLOW THE MONEY.” As always, it is the case, here.
Mark & Priscilla are Bill & Melinda, Jr.
(Make this into a poem, Some DAM!)
“Xerox Copies”
Cill & Mark
Bill & Mel
Xerox dark
Can’t you tell?
Maybe it’s just me, but every time I hear Zuckerberg in an interview, either live or in the press, he comes across as some immature teenage boy who can’t wait to just try this, or try that, and won’t it be great! Just ask those in Newark how great it was to have Zuck come in and experiment on their kids and act as the Great Disrupter. It just boggles the mind that the egos of these people are so huge that they have no concept of why we wouldn’t want them to play with their money and experiment on our kids (not theirs, or course). Gates did the same thing in Oakland at one of our high schools a few years ago (hard to turn away all those millions!); the school is still recovering from the chaos he caused. (But the teachers just didn’t understand my vision of greatness!). When the great experiment is over, they just pull their support, and off to the next experiment, all with the blessings of the local politicians. It’s nothing more than ego, and our kids continue to pay the price….
BIG BROTHER? People also need to know how much datamining is involved in personalized learning. This year, a online writing platform called MyAccess was expanded in NYC schools, a platform that automatically scores student writing through advanced computerized logarithms. As creepy as that sounds, the program also gives the vendor and central boards of education a window into classrooms to see what kids are and are not doing in real time.
More than 4 million students are already using personalized learning programs in schools but US parents have not really seen public debate of the pros and cons of the datamining involved. Some slippery language was used was when the Obama administration changed Dept. of Education datamining regulations, saying only vaguely that student data collection by third parties must be used for “educational purposes”.
Much more discussion on this topic is needed….
Didn’t this happen before… way back before the publication of, “Johnny Can’t Read?”
Have you looked into their collaboration with Summit Public Schools in California? They are giving funds but allowing the educators to take care of the pedagogy. Does the argument need to be so binary?